English vacation (Day 6): Bluewater Mall

Today we didn't feel like going into the craziness of London when it's the most touristy day of the week, and we wanted a break from herding kids through homes where they couldn't touch anything (Talea tried to climb up on the pool table thing at Knole to see the top of it and about gave the volunteer a heart attack), so we decided to go see what the shopping was like over the pond. We went to the Bluewater Mall which is about 15 minutes from Daisha's house. It's triangular in shape and has two floors. Each floor is just over a mile, so we didn't get through the whole thing with all the stops. It's built in the hole left from an old chalk mine and even has a water park you can ride little boats on. (Again, this picture is from the web since my pictures from this day are lost.)


We ate lunch in the mall at Nandos, which is a Portuguese chicken place, and it was really good. They had Krispy Kreme there too, so we had to get some to take home for later in the evening. We don't have that in our area.

There's a store there called Marks & Spencer that sells everything from groceries to furniture to clothes. They only sell their own brand too. Everything is Marks & Spencer. You won't find any Clorox or Bounty. Their brand is high quality too, so it's not the cheapest of grocery stores, but it's pretty fun to experience. They don't give you grocery bags. If you need a bag, you have to buy it, but it's reusable. They're trying to encourage people to bring their own bags to cut down on wasted bags. Daisha even ordered her new bed frame from that store. They also had a great store that has all things baby, so we checked it out and found our Phil & Teds double stroller there. Well, they had the newer version of ours, and a cool urban version, so we played with them and some baby backpack carriers. Phil & Teds is the greatest double stroller/jogger ever invented! We checked out baby stuff, then decided our dollar was too weak (compared to the pound) to make any purchases worthwhile.

We went home and had just enough time to take the kids to the ford to do some net fishing. They didn't catch anything until a guy who had caught some baby trout dropped them in their nets to make them think they had caught them. Tilly was thrilled to touch the slimy fish. Oh, I'm aching to have my pictures from this, but since they've been taken from me from some slimy villain, I will just have to take the kids down to the ford again and take new pictures.

After fishing, we had a pizza and movie night, so we ordered Dominoes pizza and watched The Other Boleyn Girl, since it was all about King Henry VIII and his wives and such. I had just learned all about him in a book Edward had mailed us, so I was anxious to see the movie, plus part of it was filmed at Knole, and we had just been there. We ate popcorn during the movie, but it's not American popcorn. In England, they sugar their popcorn rather than salt it, and they think buttered, salted popcorn is gross. If you go to the movies and order popcorn, you'll get it sugared. They have just a tiny section of salted stuff, and since no one orders it, it's the stale nasty stuff. We also sampled treats such as chocolate cornflakes (think of a treat like rice crispies, not cornflakes with chocolate milk),

and we had the Marks & Spencer brand of flapjacks that are sweeter than the other brand we tried.


We've been trying to have a movie night each night since we've been here, but something always comes up and it doesn't happen, and usually I'm busy trying to catch up on my blogs. I'm glad I spent all that time blogging rather than watching movies now, or else I wouldn't have any pictures. All I have for pictures from the last week is what's on my blog. Stupid thieves! I hope their stuff gets stolen someday, or else I hope the person had a dying child and nothing to take pictures of it with, so they were desperately poor and needed the camera for the sake of their dying child and memories. I'm still sick about it.